Digital Commons Network^™

An Examination Of Early Literacy In An Early Childhood Classroom, Fawna Ann Lovelace

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how one early childhood education teacher promotes her first graders' early literacy skills. Reading is a major component for students' successful learning and development. The female participant taught at a private, Catholic school. Research questions were: What assumptions does an early childhood education make about early literacy? How does an early childhood teacher promote early literacy through phonemic awareness activities? What role does the classroom environment play in the children's acquisition of early literacy skills? Data for this qualitative study were collected from aquestionnaire, interviews, videotaped observations, lesson plans, photos, and …

Assessing Awareness Of Local Nutrition Education Programs Among Memphis' Low Socioeconomic Adults, Josephine Marie Haller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Objective: To evaluate awareness of local nutrition programs in Memphis, TN in low socioeconomic status populations.Design: This study is a cross sectional survey design evaluating the knowledge of nutrition education resources available for low socioeconomic (SES) groups with high nutrition related health risks.Participants:66 participants recruited at a local grocery store met low SES eligibility criteria.Results: Overweight and obesity prevalence in the sample population matched national and state averages. 60% of the participants surveyed were aware of the Hope and Healing Center in general, however, there was little awareness (40%) of the nutrition education programs that they provide. 67% of the …

Improving Reading Comprehension Through Prior Knowledge Acquisition Via Digital Game Based Learning, Julie Hooker Forbess

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

As a result of the Tennessee Diploma Project, Tennessee students must meet ACT standards in order to achieve high school graduation. However, the reading level of the ACT is beyond that of many average students enrolled in high school. The reading section of the ACT in fact, utilizes many excerpts from classic literature. Classic literature is also included on the reading lists of most school systems across Tennessee as well as the entire country. Many students are unable to connect to the characters and contexts of classic literature because they lack the necessary prior knowledge to make this type of …

"Daily Planet" Vs. "Daily Bugle": The Changing Depiction Of Journalism In American Comic Books, Andrew Alan Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Journalists and journalism have always been popular vehicles for storytelling in comic books, as they are in other pop culture media. The more than 70 years of comic books in America have provided thousands of fictional journalists, especially in the superhero genre. Primary among these are the staffs of the Daily Planet at DCComics and the Daily Bugle at Marvel Comics. This content analysis -- utilizing hundreds of the original texts but also historical research and a questionnaire to significant creators -- shines a spotlight on a quantum shift in the depiction of journalists in comics. Until the introduction of …

Engaging Rural Community Members As Problem Solvers: Application Of Health Communication To Improve The Quality Of Health Care In Southwest Uganda, Tesfa N. Alexander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Using communication theories and anthropological models, I analyze the narratives of community members who are caretakers of children ages 5 and under in Southwest Uganda to situate rural community members as problem solvers whose insights can be used to inform sustainable and effective public health strategies that can lead to improved health outcomes. Throughout my analysis, I uncover themes and concepts from community members' narratives that demonstrate that health-seeking behaviors of rural community members are largely shaped by perceptions of interpersonal and social trust in local health care practitioners. Additionally, an analysis of discourse from patient-provider interactions in biomedical and …

The Press And Democracy Building: Journalism Education And Training In Eastern And South-Eastern Europe During Transition, Michael Foley

Masters

Media assistance to the former communist countries of Eastern Europe from 1989 became an important part of the transformation of that part of Europe from a socialist command economy to a democratic, liberal market economy. The media was seen as an important ideological weapon of the previous regimes and so was to be transformed in order to change society. The exact amount of media aid is unknown, so much of it was hidden under such headings as aid to civil society and democracy building, but it is known to account for hundreds of millions of euro. Most was spent on …

Polymer (Su-8) Optofluidic Device With Embedded Hydrogel Oxygen Sensing Elements, Zhan Gao, David B. Henthorn, Chang-Soo Kim

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The SU-8 photopolymer is an excellent alternative for traditional materials used in fluidic devices such as glass- or silicon-Based inorganic materials. We describe a new chemically anchored, lithographically patterned hydrogel sensing element embedded in a completed SU-8 fluidic channel structure after the channel bonding process. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrogel films incorporating oxygen-responsive ruthenium-complex fluorophores are grafted and patterned by photopolymerization of solution-phase precursors on the modified SU-8 channel surface. the optofluidic sensing platform with this embedded sensing elements exhibited excellent performance in measuring dissolved oxygen content. a unique advantage of this method is the selective growth of various functional films …

Design Charts For Retaining Walls In Seismic Areas, Yingwei Wu, Shamsher Prakash

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Retaining walls have failed either by sliding away from the backfill or due to combined action of sliding and rocking displacements, during earthquakes. Performance based design of the retaining walls in seismic areas must account for the likely displacements, in addition to calculating the usual factors of safety against failure in bearing, sliding and overturning. a realistic model for estimating dynamic displacement has been developed, which accounts for the combined action of sliding and rocking and takes into consideration, non-linear soil stiffness in sliding, and rocking, geometrical and material damping in sliding, and rocking, and coupling effects. This model was …

Finite Horizon Markov Control With One-Step Variance Penalties, Abhijit Gosavi

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Variance-penalized Markov decision processes (MDPs) for an infinite time horizon have been studied in the literature for asymptotic and one-step variance; in these models, the objective function is generally the expected long-run reward minus a constant time the variance, where variance is used as a measure of risk. for the finite time horizon, asymptotic variance has been considered in Collins [1], but this model accounts for only a terminal reward, i.e., reward is earned at the end of the time horizon. in this paper, we seek to develop a framework for one-step variance in the finite time horizon in which …

Geophysics At The Interface: Response Of Geophysical Properties To Solid-Fluid, Fluid-Fluid, And Solid-Solid Interfaces, Rosemary Knight, Laura J. Pyrak-Nolte, Lee D. Slater, Estella A. Atekwana, Anthony L. Endres, Jil T. Geller, David P. Lesmes, Seiji Nakagawa, Andre Revil, Mukul M. Sharma, Christian Straley

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Laboratory studies reveal the sensitivity of measured geophysical properties to solid-fluid, fluid-fluid, and solid-solid interfaces in granular and fractured materials. In granular materials, electrical properties and nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation times exhibit a strong dependence on the size and properties of the solid-fluid interface. The electrical and seismic properties of granular materials and the seismic properties of fractured materials reveal a dependence on the size or geometry of fluid-fluid interfaces. Seismic properties of granular and fractured materials are affected by the effective stress and cementing material at solid-solid interfaces. There have been some recent studies demonstrating the use of field-scale …

Decentralized State Feedback And Near Optimal Adaptive Neural Network Control Of Interconnected Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems, Shahab Mehraeen, Jagannathan Sarangapani, Mariesa Crow

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, first a novel decentralized state feedback stabilization controller is introduced for a class of nonlinear interconnected discrete-time systems in affine form with unknown subsystem dynamics, control gain matrix, and interconnection dynamics by employing neural networks (NNs). Subsequently, the optimal control problem of decentralized nonlinear discrete-time system is considered with unknown internal subsystem and interconnection dynamics while assuming that the control gain matrix is known. For the near optimal controller development, the direct neural dynamic programming technique is utilized to solve the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation forward-in-time. The decentralized optimal controller design for each subsystem utilizes the critic-actor structure …

Seismic Anisotropy Beneath The Afar Depression And Adjacent Areas: Implications For Mantle Flow, Stephen S. Gao, Kelly H. Liu, Mohammed G. Abdel Salam

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Shear wave splitting is a robust tool to infer the direction and strength of seismic anisotropy in the lithosphere and underlying asthenosphere. Previous shear wave splitting studies in the Afar Depression and adjacent areas concluded that either Precambrian sutures or vertical magmatic dikes are mostly responsible for the observed anisotropy. Here we report results of a systematic analysis of teleseismic shear wave splitting using all the available broadband seismic data recorded in the Afar Depression, Main Ethiopian Rift (MER), and Ethiopian Plateau. We found that while the ~450 measurements on the Ethiopian Plateau and in the MER show insignificant azimuthal …

A Simple Model To Calculate Dendrite Growth Rate During Steel Continuous Casting Process, Mujun Long, Lifeng Zhang, Fei Lu

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the current paper, the relationship between the casting speed and the dendrite growth during steel continuous casting process was studied; and a simple mathematical model to calculate the primary dendrite growth rate according to the casting speed was developed. the model was used to predict the distribution of the dendrite growth rate along width direction and casting direction during a continuous casting process, indicating a dendrite growth rate of 0.1-3.0 mm/s, which is much higher than that in regular ingot casting. the dendrite growth rate fluctuates along casting direction because of the different cooling intensity in each zone of …

Native American Students: Perceptions Of Lived Experiences Attending A Small Predominantly White University In The Upper Midwest, Dennis Richard Simons

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the lived experiences of Native American students when studying on a predominantly white campus at a small university in the Upper Midwest. Using a phenomenological approach, the researcher interviewed each of the eight participants for one hour, although there were two interviews that took longer. Two participants agreed to meet for a second interview and, again, the time taken was approximately one hour. The resulting audio-recorded interviews were then transcribed, coded, and analyzed.

Three themes emerged from the analysis of the data. Theme One: Participants depended on the support of …

Out Of The Blue: A Mother's Memoir Of Our Family's Transgender Experience, Roxanne Moore

Theses and Dissertations

OUT OF THE BLUE: A MOTHER'S MEMOIR OF OUR FAMILY'S TRANSGENDER EXPERIENCE is a memoir about what it has been like to discover that the baby girl I gave birth to almost forty years ago, now identifies as a female to male transgender person. He began his transformation both physically and legally over five years ago. Though it is a story about our entire family's transformation, it focuses mainly on what this has been like for me as a mother and the relationship I have with my first-born child.

Noted psychologist, Arlene Ishtar Lev states in Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines …

Augmented Epa With Augmented Efie Method For Packaging Analysis, Zuhui Ma, Lijun Jiang, Wengcho Chew, Maokun Li, Zhiguo Qian

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

It is evident that the low frequency full wave electromagnetic modelling is necessary for IC packaging analysis. Considering the complexity, it is very difficult to solve the whole problem directly. Even though the domain decomposition method is a legitimate approach for these types of problems, the domain decomposition method based on the equivalence principle has the low frequency breakdown issue. In this paper, we developed a low frequency augmented equivalence principle algorithm (AEPA) with the augmented electric field integral equation (AEFIE) for packaging and IC analysis. On the equivalence surfaces, not only the electric current and the magnetic current, but …

Review Of Multi-Scale Electromagnetic Modeling, W. C. Chew, Lijun Jiang, H. Y. Chao, A. J. Hesford, M. K. Li, Z. G. Qian, Y. G. Liu, Y. P. Chen, Z. H. Ma, L. E. Sun, M. S. Tong, C. Davis, W. E.I. Sha

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper reviews various methods to solve multiscale problems ranging from low-frequency methods to very high-frequency methods. ©2010 IEEE.

The Changing Role Of The Pastor's Wife In Today's Evangelical Church, Debra D. Benoit

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this project is to explore the changes that have occurred in the lives of pastors' wives over the years in regards to her position in the church, her role within the family and her life outside of the church. Research will be conducted through interviews of pastors' wives in various stages of ministry and church experience, as well as a research/literature review of materials showing the historical role of the pastor's wife and how her role has continually developed and changed over the years. The underlying goal of this thesis is to provide a framework for teaching …

Does Setting Affect Achievement Of Students With Disabilities: Comparing Co-Teaching To Resource, Sarah Yvonne Mote

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This causal comparative study compared reading achievement of middle school students with disabilities (SWD) who were served in the resource class with the reading achievement of middle school SWD who were served in the co-teaching class. Reading achievement of SWD in grades six through eight was statistically analyzed to measure gains made by both groups of students. The learning outcomes were compared using reading assessment scores from the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) and student Lexile levels. The participants were 157 sixth through eighth grade SWD. The findings suggest that SWD may benefit equally from either instructional setting. Students from …

Optimizing In Vitro Propagation Of Rosa Persica, Maryam Jafarkhani-Kermani, Pegah Khosravi, Somayeh Kavand

Publications and Research

Rosa persica with a distinctive red eye is a good candidate for addition to the breeding pool of roses. In order to optimize micropropagation of R. persica, three culture media (MS, QL and VS) were compared. The maximum growth rate was observed in the VS medium. Addition of FeEDTA (Fe: 65.4 mg/l), calcium gluconate (Cg: 2.7 g/l) and Gamborg vitamins (B5) instead of VS vitamins, alone or in combinationwith VS medium were compared. The maximum growth rate was obtained in the medium containing VS + Cg + B5 (VSCgB5). Various concentrations of BAP (0, 2, 4 and 8 μM ) …

Prediction Of Copper Grade At Flotation Column Concentrate Using Artificial Neural Network, F. Nakhaei, A. Sam, M. R. Mosavi, S. Zeidabadi

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The flotation column is a multivariable process whose main control objective is to guarantee the metallurgical yield set for the process operation, expressed by the grade and the recovery of the valuable mineral in the concentrate. The on-line estimation of grade usually requires a significant amount of work in maintenance and calibration of on-stream analyzers, in order to maintain good accuracy and high availability. These difficulties and the high cost of investment and maintenance of these devices have encouraged the approach of prediction of metal grade as an index of control performance. Therefore, advanced new methods such as Artificial Neural …

The Impacts Of Federal Stimulus Funding Under The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act (Arra) On The Economy Of New Mexico, Lee A. Reynis, Doleswar Bhandari

BBER Publications

A study commissioned by the NM Office of Recovery and Reinvestment to assess the impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) on New Mexico's economy. The ARRA provided resources to state and local economies through four primary methods: tax relief provided to individuals and businesses, aid to directly impacted individuals and families, fiscal stabilization to help maintain levels of government spending for key services, and stimulus projects. This report presents the economic impacts of ARRA supported expenditures from the enactment of the law on 19 February 2009 through the final end date for ARRA projects on 30 September …

Trade And Divergence In Education Systems, Pao Li Chang, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper presents a theory on the endogenous choice of a country's education policy and the two-way causal relationship between trade and education systems. The setting of a country's education system determines its talent distribution and comparative advantage in trade; the possibility of trade by raising the returns to the sector of comparative advantage in turn induces countries to further diferentiate their education systems and reinforces the initial pattern of comparative advantage. Specifically, the Nash equilibrium choice of education systems by two countries interacting strategically are necessarily more divergent than their autarky choices, although the difference is still less than …

The Wto Trade Effect, Pao Li Chang, Myoung-Jae Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper reexamines the GATT/WTO membership effect on bilateral trade flows, using nonparametric methods including pair-matching, permutation tests, and a Rosenbaum (2002) sensitivity analysis. Together, these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspecification biases, allows general forms of heterogeneous treatment effects, and addresses potential hidden selection biases. This is in contrast to most conventional parametric studies on this issue. Our results suggest large GATT/WTO trade-promoting effects, robust to various restricted matching criteria, alternative indicators for GATT/WTO involvement, different matching methodologies, non-random incidence of positive trade flows, and inclusion of multilateral resistance terms.

Need Singapore Fear Floating? A Dsge-Var Approach, Hwee Kwan Chow, Paul D. Mcnelis

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper uses a DSGE-VAR model to examine the managed exchange-rate system at work in Singapore and asks if the country has any reason to fear floating the exchange rate with a Taylor rule inflation-targeting mechanism that uses the short term interest rate instead of the exchange rate as the benchmark monetary policy instrument. Our simulation results show that the use of a more flexible exchange rate system will reduce volatility in inflation and investment but consumption volatility will increase. Overall, there are neither signi…cant welfare gains or losses in the regime shift. Given the highly open and trade …

Testing Structural Change In Partially Linear Models, Liangjun Su, Halbert White

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider two tests of structural change for partially linear time-series models. The first tests for structural change in the parametric component, based on the cumulative sums of gradients from a single semiparametric regression. The second tests for structural change in the parametric and nonparametric components simultaneously, based on the cumulative sums of weighted residuals from the same semiparametric regression. We derive the limiting distributions of both tests under the null hypothesis of no structural change and for sequences of local alternatives. We show that the tests are generally not asymptotically pivotal under the null but may be free of …

China's Development Of International Economic Law And Wto Legal Capacity Building, Pasha L. Hsieh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article examines legal and institutional aspects of the evolution of China’s approach to the dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It begins by analyzing the impact of China’s changing attitude toward international law on the escalation of international economic law research. In particular, the article provides the first detailed examination of China’s efforts to strengthen public–private cooperation in building its WTO legal capacity. China established think tanks to bridge the information and communication gaps between the government and industries. To develop its WTO lawyers, the Chinese government has consistently required international law firms to collaborate with …

Micro-Level Estimation Of Child Undernutrition Indicators In Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

One major limitation to addressing child undernutrition is a lack of the information required to target resources. This article extends the small-area estimation technique of Elbers, Lanjouw, and Lanjouw (2002, 2003) to jointly estimate multiple equations while allowing for individual-specific random errors across equations (in addition to cluster- and household-specific random errors). Estimates of the prevalence of stunting and underweight for children under age 5 in Cambodia from 17 Demographic and Health Survey strata are disaggregated into 1,594 communes by combining the Demographic and Health Survey data. The estimates are consistent with the surveyonly estimates at the aggregate and primary …

Sequential Investment, Hold-Up And Strategic Delay, Juyuan Zhang, Yi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate hold-up with simultaneous and sequential investment. We show that if the encouragement effect of sequential complementary investments dominates the delay effect, sequential investment alleviates the underinvestment caused by the hold-up problem. Further, if it is allowed to choose when to invest, strategic delay occurs when the encouragement effect of sequential complementary investments dominates the delay effect.

Traffic Velocity Prediction Using Gps Data: Ieee Icdm Contest Task 3 Report, Wei Shen, Yiannis Kamarianakis, Laura Wynter, Jingrui He, Qing He, Rick Lawrence, Grzegorz Swirszcz

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This report summarizes the methodologies and techniques we developed and applied for tackling task 3 of the IEEE ICDM Contest on predicting traffic velocity based on GPS data. The major components of our solution include 1) A pre-processing procedure to map GPS data to the network, 2) A K-nearest neighbor approach for identifying the most similar training hours for every test hour, and 3) A heuristic evaluation framework for optimizing parameters and avoiding over-fitting. Our solution finished Second in the final evaluation.